Innehållsförteckning för December 2016 från Classic Boat

Butch Dalrymple-Smith is a rare breed these days. Entirely self-taught, he has been a round the world racer (1973 Whitbread), a rigger, engineer, yacht designer, boat builder, rating consultant and classic boat restorer. He’s done a few other things in between including design software and – his eyes light up when he recalls this one – design gravel machinery. He trained at King’s College, London, to be a doctor. “But then I discovered I didn’t really like sick people,” he says. The 71-year-old made his name in key design roles with Ron Holland in Ireland, Lürssen in Holland and then at Camper & Nicholson in the UK. Then 18 years ago he decamped with his French wife to La Ciotat, in typical Dalrymple-Smith style, simply because he fell in love…

Magazines and the national press have a long association with the development of classic dinghy classes. It is thanks in part to many papers such as the Sunday Times and the Daily Mirror, also the now-defunct News Chronicle, that some of the iconic designs of the 1950s and 1960s, including the Enterprise, the SigneT and the Mirror, came to fruition and, particularly in the case of the Mirror dinghy, helped them become some of the most successful designs of their generation. Yachting World magazine, too, led the way among the yachting press, introducing the 10ft 6¾in hard-chine Cadet pram dinghy in 1947 following the success of the Merlin, which it published plans of in 1946. Both the Merlin and the Cadet were Jack Holt designs, and so, five years later,…

OSTEND, BELGIUM Three Fifes under one roof Hans Keters of the Lowyck Shipyard must be thinking William Fife III yachts are like buses, with no fewer than three in the shed right now. First, and perhaps most excitingly, there is Eileen of Fife, which arrived in 2003 and sat idle for a decade waiting for a new owner. She was drawn in 1928/9 for a Sir Louis Fulton, who decided she was too small (she’s 56ft/17.1m) and ordered Eilean (1936) instead, the yacht now owned by Panerai. Fulton’s two sons disagreed and had Eileen of Fife built in 1935. Her new owner is having a complete rebuild carried out for classic racing and charter. Work started in 2013. The hull has now been closed, the sub-deck is down, and although…

VERNIER CALIPER Precise measurement in the manufacture of a boat’s machinery is essential for good performance, but there’s a limit to how minutely a scale can be divided and still be read by the naked eye. The Vernier caliper takes measurement beyond the normal limit of visual acuity. This 12-inch model No 122 E&M, made in the 1930s by the LS Starrett Company in Athol, Massachusetts, USA measures in both ‘English’ and metric units – to 1/1000in and 0.02mm. With a steady hand and trusty eye for accuracy, the machinist closes the jaws around the work and tightens the locking screw of the auxiliary head. The jaws are next brought to a snug fit using the thumb wheel of the fine adjustment screw before the moving jaw is also locked.…

It’s the land of the sawn-off keel, the sawn-off bowsprit and the sawn-off shotgun. The keel because the creeks are shallow, the bowsprit because they are narrow and the gun because many longshore folk in Essex have drifted east from Bethnal Green, Bow and Bermondsey, where old habits die hard. Coastal Essex is marked culturally by violation, historically by sea and, in more recent times, by land. From the sea, ‘the invasion coast’, as Essex was once dubbed, with the ships of Romans, Saxons and Danes turning up with conquest in mind. Boudicca torched the Roman fort at the head of the River Colne at Colchester, Vikings beheaded the Saxon leader, Brythnoth, on the River Blackwater, while flayed Danes suffered at the hands of a new cult, the Christians who,…

Have you ever had a good old chuck-out on your cruising yacht? All the stuff that has built up over years in lockers, the lazarette, in galley cupboards, on the bookshelf… you even get tough on the drinks cabinet. And lo and behold, you see the boat float two inches higher in the water. She sails better, she’s livelier on the helm – why didn’t you do this years ago? Well, imagine the same situation on a slightly bigger boat. The three-masted schooner Adix may be 185ft (56m) long, with a professional crew to look after her, but that doesn’t mean she is immune to the kinds of issues that affect everyday cruisers. Adix, though, hadn’t gained a few pounds. Since 1991, it was calculated she had gained 27 tonnes.…

Nicole Jacques of Maine Built Boats What is so special about a boat built in Maine? It comes with an implicit guarantee of craftsmanship, quality and durability. Because boatbuilding is such a competitive field for Mainers, anyone buying a Maine-built boat can be assured that its builders have done everything they can to deliver the best possible vessel. We’ve led the world in technological advancements in boatbuilding, from wood to carbon. Is there really a global demand for boats with the ‘built in Maine’ stamp? Four centuries of success for Maine boatbuilders is the evidence! Maine sees $650m in boatbuilding-related sales annually. Our biggest challenge is to increase capacity to meet a growing demand, while keeping our high standards of craftsmanship. How do you sustain the skills? Several years ago…

SPECIAL COMMENDATION CK 78 Mary by Shaun Mills from West Mersea, taken at 7.57am in January from Shingle Point, Mersea Island, Essex FACES OF THE SEA WINNER Sheltering Ferryman by David Stearne from Eyethorne PHOTOGRAPHS OF A VESSEL ON THE NATIONAL REGISTER OF HISTORIC VESSELS WINNER Moored by Moonlight by Jonathan Lewis, from Warborough TRADITIONAL MARITIME SKILLS IN ACTION WINNER High Above by Pascal Vandecasteele from Antwerp, Belgium…

Project Sagar Parikrama, which I rather rashly volunteered for in April 2006, was primarily about achieving the first solo circumnavigation by an Indian (‘Sagar Parikrama’ means circumnavigation by sea in Sanskrit). The project turned out to be more than that, however, as Vice Admiral Manohar Awati (Retd), who conceived the project, insisted that the boat be built in India. He had read about the young merchant seaman from British India Steam Navigation Company who completed the first solo non-stop circumnavigation in a boat built in Bombay from Indian teak. If Robin Knox-Johnston could rely on Indian construction, then so could the first Indian solo circumnavigator! Lively Lady, the boat used for the solo circumnavigation before Robin’s, by Alec Rose, had also been built in India. The long history of wooden…

FIRST LIGHT 26 Runabout with whizz The First Light 26 (a 36 also exists) from American builder Pease Boatworks and Marine Railway will strike an instant chord with anyone who fancies themselves as having a good eye for a pretty, traditional craft, but also wants to go like stink. These utility-style runabouts of 26ft (8m) certainly look the part, with or without sprayhood, with their workboat styling, centre consoles and wooden clinker topsides (the bottom is a sti. wood/glass composite). The cunningly hidden Suzuki 140hp four-stroke motor will propel them all the way to 28-30 knots with a very useful cruising speed of 20-22 knots, and shallow draught of 2ft 2in (66cm) – or just 1ft 3in (38cm) with the outboard tilted up, which makes the boat very beachable (the…

Les Voiles de Saint-Tropez is a rendezvous of yachting history like no other, with classes for the oldest, newest and biggest boats afloat. Wally superyachts with tinted windows glide through fleets of cream-sailed ga ers. The classics this year included everything from the gloriously restored Cambria to Sparkman & Stephens speed-machine Blitzen and a lone Solent Sunbeam. On the water, the proliferation of masts is as thick as during the Round the Island Race in the Solent. On the dock, crowds of tourists gather in the resort’s inner harbour to view the big yachts as if they were celebrities. The Thursday of each regatta is taken over by the Gstaad Yacht Club’s Centenarian’s Race, which this year saw eighteen 100-year-olds take part in a pursuit race in glorious conditions, the…

No object of any sort can touch an old wooden sailing yacht for sheer value for money. But while they are beautiful, they have character and history, let’s not pretend for a moment that they are not susceptible to the same bottom line that governs everything else in life. A 25ft cabin yacht, four tonnes of handcrafted hardwood, rigged, engined and in concours condition, will often change hands for little over £5,000, and if you’re prepared to do some work, you’ll get that boat for free or next to it. And what an extraordinarily magical thing that is – a piece of furniture that you can live in or sail around the world. Many yachts in this size bracket were born in the 1930s during the ‘great’ depression: with less…

All centenarians can look back on a few close shaves over the years and this 1906 gaff yawl came closer than some to destruction, when a former owner took a match to her interior in the 1970s. History does not relate what drove him to spark the flame, but if on that occasion the elderly yawl was the cause of frustration, it is equally true that over the years she has inspired near devotion. There can’t be many boats, after all, that have seen their image tattooed onto a crew member’s shoulder. As I discovered when I joined her for a sail recently, she is indeed a picture. She has, unusually, kept the same name for 110 years, and these days she is working her charm on sail training guests,…

Any questionmark over the appetite for another Solent classic regatta was answered in emphatic style over the weekend of 24-25 September, as the inaugural Hamble Classics regatta welcomed a fleet of 65 boats. The event was put together by Solent sailor Jonty Sherwill, after his partner Vicki Weston suggested they organise their own regatta, as they sailed back to the Hamble following last year’s Charles Stanley Cowes Classics Week. Sherwill secured the backing of his yacht club the Royal Southern as an experienced regatta organiser, before he set about the task of plucking “the best bits from all the regattas I had sailed over 30 years and melding them into a single weekend”. The event proved a huge success and included an exciting river finish for the smaller boats on…

ALBERTA Essex oyster smacks Maldon-based broker MJ Lewis has a glut of smacks for sale – five to be precise – as well as a modern, GRP smack yacht. Sizes range from 32-44ft (9.8-13.4m), and the oldest, Mary, dates back to 1844, making her one of the oldest sailing vessels in commission. Pictured here is cock-of-the-fleet Alberta, 44ft long and built in 1855, with a complete rebuild by Barry Tester in the early 2000s. She’s on at £110,000. At the other end of the scale are Edith (1890) and George & Alice (1909). Both are around 34ft (10.4m) and built by Aldous of Brightlingsea. Edith has recently been completely re-built, and is engineless (although with dinghy and outboard). George & Alice has an engine but requires a new mast. Both…

PERMANANENT EXHIBITION Museum of the Docklands The way London’s river and docks formed the city, and continue to do so, is an endless source of fascination. The place to learn all about it is at London’s Museum of the Docklands, with 10 free galleries of permanent exhibitions. museumoflondon.org.uk/museum-london-docklands UNTIL 4 JUNE 2017 In Safe Hands Mersey Maritime Museum, Liverpool Liverpool’s pilots have been guiding ships on the hazardous passage into the Bay of Liverpool and the Mersey River for 250 years now, and this free exhibition pays homage to the heroism and lives saved in that time. liverpoolmuseums.org.uk 2017 6-15 JANUARY London Boat Show, Excel Centre, London One to pencil into the diary for some post-Christmas jollity, one of the only good things about January! londonboatshow.com 21-24 JANUARY Festival of…